Nearly five years after Andrew Scott was cast as Tom Ripley in Steven Zaillian’s limited series Ripley, based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel, the Irish actor has received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of the infamous con man.
In a conversation with THR, Scott, who also received a Gotham Award for his performance, reflects on his “arduous” preparation for the role, the incredible physical stamina he exerted during one particular scene in episode three and how he protected his mental health.
How did you become attached to the project?
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Steven Zaillian had sent me an email, and we may have had a brief conversation. And then he sent me the entirety of the scripts, which was a highly unusual thing. It was great to be able to read those scripts in their entirety. Sometimes you just get maybe a pilot episode or something, and you’re not sure where it might go, but the scripts were so extraordinarily written, with incredible stage directions and just everything about it was beautifully crafted. And the character just seemed to me to be wonderful, and I find it kind of witty and dark and mysterious. I was immediately intrigued by this character. What was really extraordinary about the way it was written is actually the dialogue is pretty lean: There aren’t a lot of speeches or long diatribes.
What did you want to do differently in your portrayal of Ripley than in previous iterations?
My biggest job was to keep my playfulness alive and to not get overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. It’s genuinely an enormous televisual part. Just the sheer amount of screen time and acting, and the amount of time you spend with this character is highly unusual and in some ways unprecedented, certainly for me. If I’m thinking about the whole year of filming and the amount of screen time that I would have to fill, I found that kind of intimidating, so I couldn’t really think too much about the enormity of the task or the enormity of the production. In one way, that’s the thing that I had to really protect — for both my performance but also for my health.
How did you prepare for the role?
I knew that it was going to be very arduous in the sense that there was just such a huge amount of acting I knew I had to do. I learned Italian for three or four months beforehand. In relation to how Tom looked, as someone in the early ’60s, I felt like he would be sort of trim-looking but not too worked-out. You want to be healthy and whatever, but you want it to be period-correct. And other than that, I suppose a lot of my work was very private. Steve doesn’t do rehearsals with actors, so a lot of the work for me was sort of private and things I had to work out on my own. And that was fine because I’m dealing with a character who has a lot of secrets.
What was the first scene you shot?
The first scenes that we shot were in the boardinghouse when he’s defrauding somebody in episode one over the phone. We shot that very early on, and then we went into the sequence of the murder of Freddie Miles.
What scene was most challenging for you?
The physical stamina of the boat stuff was really difficult. The thing that was the most difficult was to just act so much — and a lot of time to act on your own. Carrying the weight of that around for so long, it was kind of like doing movies back-to-back in relation to the sheer amount of time you have to be on set. So that’s what I find maybe the most challenging. And then the stuff that I loved — I call it the more kind of domestic scenes between Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning) and Tom in a cafe or Tom and Dickie going to see a concert or just the stuff that’s a little bit more human. I find those parts of Tom very endearing; or the fact that he’s such an enthusiast for art and beauty, and that side to him that’s actually quite sweet, I find it a nice kind of balm in relation to the darker stuff.
Talk to me about filming the physically arduous boat scene.
I was scrambling, trying to not drown myself. A lot of the time I wasn’t even aware of where the camera was — all the stuff where I’m trying to submerge that boat into the water, this is all [me] literally trying to sink that boat with a little exhausted Irishman, trying to tip the boat while lifting all those rocks and just being underwater. Trying to get on that boat was really difficult. And you know, you’re not just doing it once. Steve likes to get a lot of coverage. You’re doing that an awful lot. It was grueling, but it’s an extraordinary sequence that engages all the departments of the crew and the creative team.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
